In our reply comments in the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) Notice of Inquiry into Improving Broadband Access in MTS, the Fiber Broadband Association reiterated its arguments that the FCC (1) should not interfere with State and local mandatory access laws that promote competition in broadband deployment in MTEs; (2) should continue to allow broadband providers to enter into marketing and bulk-billing arrangements with MTE owners; and (3) should act expeditiously to prohibit exclusive leaseback arrangements within MTEs except where providers can show they are not anti-competitive.

With respect to revenue sharing, the Association supported comments that argued that cost-based arrangements to share in a provider’s revenues from tenant accounts can provide additional incentives for landlords to allow competitive providers to extend their networks to the property. However, we clarified that such fees should reflect the reasonable costs incurred by the MTE owner in connection with the provider’s access to and use of the MTE and be non-discriminatory. This will prevent the MTE owner either from extracting excessive rents or undermining access by providers that tenants may wish to use for service.

In 1996, Congress decided that it was crucial to accelerate investments in high-performance broadband networks and enacted Section 706, requiring the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to first a...